LeConte History

Paul Adams with his dog Cumberland Jack. You can go to the website to see a better version of this picture. Click on the picture and it will take you to the website.

Some of you were interested in the history of Mt. LeConte. I will save some of the history lessons for Nathan, afterall, he is a pretty darn good story teller. As for the history of Mt. LeConte, Paul Adams played a huge roll in its making.

This is an excerpt  from Wikipedia:

Although the mountain was measured in the 1850s, very little activity took place on the mountain until the 1920s, when Paul Adams moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. An enthusiastic hiker and explorer, Adams spent much of his free time creating adventures in the mountains. In 1924 he joined the Great Smoky Mountain Conservation Association, a group dedicated to making the region into a national park. As part of this push, later that year he led an expedition up the mountain with dignitaries from Washington, in order to show the group what rugged beauty those mountains held. The group spent the night in a large tent which would later become a cabin, and eventually the LeConte Lodge, a popular resort near the top of the peak. The trip was a great success and about a decade later Mount Le Conte, and the surrounding region, was protected as part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There are some great pictures of the first camp that existed on top of Mt. LeConte. Click on the photo above and it should take you to the website. I hope you enjoy a step back in time. I always love seeing photos of what the camp and cabins looked like through out the years.